There, you have it again: Every time I try to get acquainted with this monster-program I stumble across something trivial - and give up Simple task: make a crop from a photo of a given specific pixel dimension say 325x176px. I have Deke McLellands 1-on-1 book before me (chapter on cropping) but I can't find out Anybody here who can help, please? (I'm "using" CS4)
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Btw. while I hope this can be done in Photoshop, I'm pretty sure it is not possible in Lightroom, and also not in CaptureNX. But in my ancient Paint Shop pro it's super easy

I still have Paint Shop Pro 7 on my system for those things I can't do as easily in PS

Dunno if CS is much different from Elements, but by setting unrestricted cropping, leaving the boxes for dimensions and resolution empty, and keeping an eye on the info panel you can set any pixel size you want.

Yeah, I have found the info panel.
Now I only have to find out, how to make that show pixel instead of cm...
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I made an error in that I chose some width and height for the crop (e.g. 3:2) to keep the ratio when cropping, which worked fine. But in this case the display in the info panel showed only the width and height I had put in

I've had the same problem and I haven't found the solution either. With the crop tool selected but no crop yet drawn it's possible to select or create a crop with a particular aspect ratio using the crop tool presets dropdown box (just below and to the left of the File menu selector). Unfortunately that doesn't help if you need a precise width and height in pixels though obviously there are options for resizing the cropped image afterwards.

As popo says, the rectangular marquee tool can also be used to select an area which can then be cropped by using the Image menu. The Info panel units are selected by clicking the little down arrow box to the right of the Info tab and selecting Panel Options.

By the way, something I've found useful from time to time is the ability to save a selection in one image, open a second image and load the originally saved selection by selecting the "Document" appropriate to the first image as the source for the crop. Hope that makes sense...

Hmm, I didn't understand popo the way you did, but you're right:
You do the selection with the marquee tool first (which can be done in absolute pixels) and then choose image->crop from the Menu bar.
You could not achieve this with the crop-tool alone - methinks. At least not, when you like to conserve the individual pixels of the original and not resize them.
Thanks for your help!

The only thing that doesn't work with the cropping tool is (pre-)setting a ratio (say 3:2) and then crop to the required width (yes, the info panel shows the actual pixel sizes while drawing the cropping tool plus it has the desired aspect ration), as that will resize the cropped image to the size you have preset (3x2px/cm/in).
With the cropping tool you also need to steer your mouse to the exact size of the crop which might be fiddly esp. with large crops.
So for easiest cropping down to some given pixel size the way using the marquee tool first, entering the desired size of the selection/crop, positioning the selection at the right place in your image and then crop via menu is probably the most efficient.

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It is surprising that PhotoShop doesn't at least allow the option of numerically entering x,y coordinates and width and height for a crop.

By the way, in that Info panel there's a "+" sign with another "+" as a subscript just to the left of the "X:" and "Y:". That plus sign is clickable and guess what it does! I've only just discovered it or I would have mentioned it earlier.

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I completely forgot it was coming up but I think it must have been your thread which is nice.

Thanks.

Bob.

P.S. I've just checked at it was my previous post in this thread. I'm not hugely into milestones but I'm happy that it was a post with something useful to add to the forum rather than a housekeeping task.

Don't use the crop tool for exact sizes. Use the rectangular selection tool and just enter the required pixel dimensions in the bar at the top. If it says cm, just replace it with px. For example 367 px.

Then nudge the selection with the arrow keys if required, before copying (CTRL C), then creating a new document (CTRL N) and pasting it it (CTRL V).

I'm missing something. With CS4 those Width and Height boxes are greyed out with the default "Normal" style active. If I select "Fixed Size" from the Style dropdown listbox I can enter width and height in pixels but doing so doesn't update the selection... whoops, it just updated ...

I've just accidentally found out that after typing in a height and width the selection updates after I click somewhere in the image. Thanks for that: it'll be a real time-saver in the future. I wonder why Adobe doesn't seem to have documented this in the CS4 online Help pages?